


There were too many kinds of tea

by DrWholocked (Samilu)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Thoughts, post trf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samilu/pseuds/DrWholocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were too many types of tea. He wasn’t sure when options like this became overwhelming. He stood in the aisle, eyes flicking frantically across the multi-coloured little boxes, each one blurring and morphing into the next until he couldn’t tell one from the other. How was this his life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	There were too many kinds of tea

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever fic...sorry it's kind of depressing.
> 
> Thanks to [flawedamythyst](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst) for the beta/Britpick.

There were too many types of tea. He wasn’t sure when options like this became overwhelming. He stood in the aisle, eyes flicking frantically across the multi-coloured little boxes, each one blurring and morphing into the next until he couldn’t tell one from the other. He tried to recall the appearance of his usual brand – just regular PG Tips; it shouldn’t be hard to find, but his confusion was fuelling his anxiety and he just felt lost. Placing the basket carefully at his feet – disregarding the milk and bread already in there – he abruptly turned, flexed his fingers and walked straight out of the shop.

He walked with purpose, straight past 221B and on to Regent’s Park, avoiding eye contact with anyone, avoiding _any_ contact with anyone. He walked until his limp threatened to unbalance him, and when he reached a bench he sat, staring blankly at nothing.

How was this his life? He, who’d faced and overcome so many hurdles to carve out exactly the path he wanted. He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was 6 years old and his sister had fallen from the upper branches of the old tree in their local playground and broken her collarbone. He remembered watching her fall, the sickening crack when she’d hit the ground and her pained, and painful, screams and cries of shock and agony. He remembered knowing he could do nothing to help her but get her home, where his mother would know what to do. And later, thinking “ _One day, I’ll know what to do. One day, I’ll make sure I know what to do_ ”. 

He also remembered his mother, sitting him down that same evening and quietly, patiently, explaining to him why they couldn’t afford for him to study to be a doctor. That was the first time he’d understood why his father didn’t work like the other kids’ fathers did. Why his mother was always working two, three, four casual jobs at a time.

Then there was the first time he wished he’d known how to fight. Again, it was Harry. He was in year nine and she was in year ten and they were both at the same school. Harry had been dating boys for a year or so, but that year John and Harry both discovered girls. Some of the boys she’d previously dated took it as some kind of personal offence when she was found in the embrace of Amy Farrow, who’d been “out” since she was about eleven years old. 

When John came upon them, Harry was on the ground, her dress torn. Amy, however, was slapping, punching and kicking anything she could reach, with all the practice those years of being bullied and harassed had given her. The boys soon fled, but it was another two years before Harry felt safe enough and strong enough to date openly again.

He never gave up his dream to become a doctor. He watched his father’s continued decline in health and increased reliance on alcohol to numb the pain, he watched friends and family around him experience pain, illness, injury; and each time made himself the same promise – one day, I’ll know what to do. 

He’d learned about the Army in Year 10. The Career Fair was on and he’d spoken with representatives from several universities and explained his situation. They’d all given him pamphlets on available government loans and other forms of financial support. Then he’d found the Army recruitment stand, where the recruiting officer outlined how studying through the Army worked and he’d realised that this way, he could learn to help and to protect.

His acceptance into the Army’s medical training program was the greatest moment of his life to date and it was the first of many times when he would charge right through disappointment and other people’s expectations to reach his own goals.

So, how was this now his life? He’d essentially just run away from _tea bags_. Sherlock had been…gone…for four months now, and rather than pulling himself back up on his feet and striding purposefully forward, he’d allowed himself to get sucked into a vortex of self-loathing, guilt, his own inadequacy and the emptiness he perceived all around him. 

He knew why. He’d spent years of his life learning to always know what to do, how to help, how to spare his loved ones from as much pain and anguish as possible; but when his best friend stood on the ledge of St Bart’s and told him that the phone call was “his note”, told him to believe that he was a fake, John had understood what Sherlock was about to do and he’d gone _blank_. He’d fumbled his way through that phone call, trying to reach him, trying to show him and he’d forgotten everything his one unit of psychology had taught him about suicide. He’d done everything wrong. And now Sherlock was buried beneath a simple black stone and John’s life was purposeless, meaningless and he felt broken and empty. Again.

The acidic burn of his churning emotions was crawling up his throat and suddenly, he realised what Sherlock must have been feeling up on that roof. He felt like everything he valued had been stripped from him, he had no goals to strive for, nothing he wanted to achieve. The blank abyss his life had become yawned ahead of him, unending, and it terrified him.

He pulled out his phone and dialled a nearly forgotten number, when it finally answered he said “Hi, Ella, it’s John Watson. I think I need some help.”


End file.
